eBay Taps the Fly in PayPal's New National Ad Campaign

The actor known for his roles in movies like The Fly and Jurassic Park is using his quirky persona to demonstrate how helpful PayPal is to his online and offline shopping. Jeff Goldblum is featured in several videos that are part of eBay's first, "fully integrated," national ad campaign for PayPal.

Why would eBay's payments unit want to advertise? PayPal announced the new campaign on its corporate blog where it explained, "As the PayPal experience has innovated over the years, we realize it's absolutely critical that we help our customers understand that PayPal offers real benefits that give shoppers one simple way to pay online, via mobile phone and increasingly in-store."

The announcement comes amid rumors of pending layoffs at PayPal as the unit's president David Marcus, who replaced Scott Thompson this year, imprints his own vision on the company.

PayPal, which has long dominated P2P payments, is facing competition on new fronts from startups like Square and from financial services giants, including Visa and Mastercard, all of whom are trying to become the mobile wallet.

PayPal wrote on Monday, "Many have said the future of money is the "mobile wallet" but the technology isn't the point. We're genuinely trying to make the lives of our customers easier, not asking them to adopt a new "wallet" technology. To us, the answer is simple: it's just PayPal."

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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